Q&A: Purity

Question: What is the highest kind of purity I can aspire to?

Sri Chinmoy: The highest kind of purity is purity in the physical, that is to say, the lower physical, the emotional vital. The region below the navel has to be purified totally. Human beings have purity to some extent in the heart; in the mind there is very little. In the vital, purity is mixed up with impurity; there dynamism and aggression work together. So whenever you feel aggression, it is impurity, and when you feel divine dynamism, it is purity. Below the vital is the physical. There, due to inertia and sloth, darkness reigns supreme. Where there is darkness, impurity is bound to play its role.

You have to aspire for purity in the gross physical. How can you do it? It is through constant prayer and your constant inner cry for Light. Light and darkness cannot stay together. Impossible! Just as fear and courage cannot go together, similarly purity and impurity cannot stay together.

Sri Chinmoy: We can purify the mind either by emptying the mind or by invoking light from above or from within. We can think of the mind as a vessel. The vessel is full of dirty, filthy water, let us say. If we empty it, then only do we get the opportunity to fill it up again with pure water. Or we can think of the mind as a dark room, a room that has not seen light for many, many years. If we take the mind as a dark room, we see that we need someone who can bring light into this room. That person is the soul. So we have to make friends with the soul. We have to invoke this most intimate friend who has the capacity to help us and the willingness to illumine anything that is dark within us. We have to consciously feel that we need the soul just as we need the body. If our need is sincere and genuine, then the soul will come forward and illumine the darkness that we have in our minds.